Moda fabric treasure

Sunday, 8 April 2012

CANARY WHARF

Happy Easter to you, from our trip to Canary Wharf, in Docklands, London. Here I am feeling very hot, very smug and GLASSLESS - first day of the contact lens trial, could not read anything lol, as I wear varifocals, distance lenses proved very odd, I could not read my phone or tickets, sooo, at St Pancras station I could not get out of the barrier, seems I was putting the reservation ticket through, duh!!

I guess I will have to try a distance in one eye and a reading lens in the other or wear glasses & lenses, sort of defeats the object. Wow I have a lot of wrinkles under my eyes. I never see them below the glasses & without glasses well I cant see, I know feel very aged. Still back to THE TRIP.

This is my husband disappearing into the space age at the station

Here are Boris bikes. It seems that it is a huge white (or blue) elephant, as these bikes are free for a half hour, so they are borrowed for 25 mins, parked and then another one taken out. It seems according to my daughters fiance that all the bikes end up at the station & blokes with vans have to ferry them around the sites. I would have loved to ride them around! Maybe next time

I am aware at how awful this picture looks, this is the building that my daughters fiance works in fortunately not on the floor where these planes from City airport fly by, we saw 4 planes taking the same route in a matter of 10 minutes, chilled me to the bone. This is the most amazing place as normally the sky scrapers are so close together that you cant stand back and get the view of how awesome they are, at Canary Wharf they are mind blowing, I took lots of pictures as I was so awestruck, but they look really boring now to post, so I decided to leave them out and show some of the sculptures round and about

I have no idea why, what this is, but it was fascinating for an artist who loves spherical forms, the textures was ace, but I thought I had better not do a rubbing, especially given the amount of security around this area

This is by Caro, I have a leaflet but the cat is settled next to me and if I move she will run away, so maybe next post? I shot this to show the juxtaposition of the copper structure with the natural flowing form of the wall and the soft budding trees backed by harsh geometric metallic lines

Here is nature in its glory, in early spring backed by giant forms with millions of eyes

Here for many centuries ships docked & loaded & unloaded goods from the Empire and all the world, a vibrant wondrous place, now so calm & futuristic, my Father came from London & would talk about the Docks, in the 1980's my husband ran the second London Marathon through this area which was mostly wasteland, it is beautifully eerie, hard to explain, modern, steel, glass & water with a monorail & the shops....oh the shops everything, every ordinary, posh, extortionate retail outlet you could imagine & cupcakes...oh yes dedicated cupcakes - yes I did - but the very tiny one only - then wished I had had a huge one like all the others, yum

Another spherical form, again by Caro, this looked like leather, it seems to be the whole world gathered up to me, all held together, I can search for deeper meanings as well, but I thought that it was beautiful, I hope that you do too?

Then a short walk bought us to the rented flat that my daughter is living in for a few weeks, this is one of the views from her balcony the boats are just 50 yards away, it was so quiet & peaceful & exciting,

with yachts sailing past the Millenium Domes (the O2 area now) & neon tickers running along the edge, I wish we could have seen it all lit up at night

This is a view of the flat from the main bridge. There are men with guns on the bridge. Any vehicle has to be scanned for bombs or weapons just behind where this picture is taken, the whole area is so secure, it is so precious to the world economy, no matter what we think about finance or the banks, we really need them and this is the financial heart of the world. I am still in awe of the whole area

The other side of the bridge is Billingsgate fish market. Look at the design features here. The cross hatches on the road mirror the metal structure on the building. See the gun turret in grey, very sinister

Then a massive treat - Jamies Italian. Jamie Olivers restaurant, Look at the size of the knife, it was massive and very heavy and the fork was also really heavy & a beautiful shape

This is part of what was consumed by this naughty person, copper bowl with the most amazing chips & the mushrooms and steak were perfect, really perfect for a medium rare meat eater. We also had starters really Italian, mushrooms & cheese, and pasta, it was all fantastic. Then pudding, well I could not eat mine as we were in a rush to get the silly train back, so I bought it home and its Easter Day tomorrow and I will eat it then instead of Easter eggs

But where were all the people, Canary Wharf was nearly deserted. Oh here they are waiting for the trains to leave London, the main line station was heaving full up escalators. We sat in a quiet carriage where a very borish loud slightly drunk man shouted through the whole journey whilst sitting under the please be quiet notice, but we swopped pictures via bluetooth so I would have these to post.

I do hope that you have enjoyed seeing a snapshot of what was a fabulous & unusual day, the rent for these flats is £750 per week, thats £3K per month, they are not paying it as they had a flood in their flat & had to move out & as he works here they managed to get this flat

Oh by the way the flat was really lovely, but everyone can see into each others windows, very odd, there are hundreds of flats and really expensive cars, all the posh makes. No children playing anywhere, in fact hardly any people at all which was really really odd. I only saw one man on the boats. We wondered if they were for pleasure or if people actually lived on them.

So its back home to watch the Masters golf. I did finish another small quilt yesterday, maybe thats for another post. Thanks for reading. Oh and Linda I have not posted you comment because of the phone number, I have only just read it, but I will put the number in my phone & yes we must meet up, I can always have another trip to London, I am getting a bit of the bug now ! x

2 comments:

I wore one of each lense and it does work so give it a try! I only stopped wearing them cos I was out galavanting and drinking and often wasnt sure if Id removed them when Id got home and gone to bed.......cough, cough And then I made my eyes sore trying to take out, what frequently, wasnt there any way... and no I wasnt a hiss head..exactly. Just forgetful when tired...right.

So glad you had a great trip...we must talk about it soon and then l can answer some of your questions!Haxxxxhope to see you soonxxgreat images by the way.xxxlyndaps..loved the image of Boris's bikes you took.xx